


Taibhse

by TheMarkOfEyghon



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Multi, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:08:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23891353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMarkOfEyghon/pseuds/TheMarkOfEyghon
Summary: How many more times is he going to kiss Randall and taste guilt like ash on his tongue, feeling certain that he’d lost him even though he’s right there in his arms?___In which Ripper grieves a death that never occurred.
Relationships: Randall (BtVS)/Ethan Rayne, Rupert Giles/Ethan Rayne, Rupert Giles/Ethan Rayne/Randall, Rupert Giles/Ethan Rayne/Randall/Deirdre Page/Thomas Sutclifee/Philip Henry (mentioned), Rupert Giles/Randall
Kudos: 3





	Taibhse

It’s the warehouse. 

It’s too dark to see anything but Ripper knows it like he knows the face of a friend or the voice of his mum. The air smells of mildew and rot where the walls are deteriorating after so many years left unattended to but underneath that is the lingering scent of sulfur from the matches that they used to light the candles. And it occurs to him, then, that he ought to see if he can find one of them and fish a lighter out of his pocket to see what the hell is going on and why he’s here, alone and shivering in the cold. 

And no sooner than the thought crossed his mind does light suddenly appear. A heavenly glow that makes a spotlight in the center of the room and Ripper realizes, with a start, that he’s not alone here. Randall’s lying just a few feet away, on his back, limbs spread out awkwardly against the dirty floor. What’s he doing there? Ripper opens his mouth to call out to him, but he can’t make a sound. 

Randall can though.

And he does. It starts as a hum but quickly becomes a chant. His voice is a thousand voices and Ripper feels very cold when he realizes what the words are, what Randall’s summoning all on his own. And he starts forward, legs fighting through air that feels like jello, to try and stop him. It feels important to stop him -- something terrible is going to happen if he lets himself get taken again, he just knows it. 

Out of the shadows, figures step forward. Faster and smoother than Ripper. Ethan, Dee, Thomas, Philip. They have no faces, just masks of borrowed shadows. Each one of them sits in the circle and takes over the chant while Randall falls silent. And it’s not his will that’s moving Ripper anymore, it’s something else. He can’t change his course or divert to a different path. He’s being FORCED this way. His knees buckle and he hits the ground painfully, awkwardly sitting. 

His mouth opens again. He tries to tell them to stop chanting. Tries to tell Randall to sit up, to call it off. But those words don’t come out. He’s chanting too, his mouth moving to make the familiar shapes of ancient words that hold a heavier, darker meaning than they ever imagined. He has no control over it, he can’t close his mouth or bite his tongue or even choke on the sobs that shake his chest. It’s getting colder by the second and the light here flickers before going out and sending him back into darkness again. 

_‘Let it be over,’_ He thinks, desperately. _‘Let it have fouled up. Let it not have worked.’_

Twin ovals of glowing green blink out at him in the darkness. And Ripper can’t see, but he can HEAR the sound of Eyghon’s smile, tearing Randall’s delicate skin in a ghoulish expression that’s too wide for his face. 

“What’s a little bit of murder between friends?” Randall asks, in Eyghon’s voice, before he falls lifelessly forward into his lap and Ripper **screams**.

  
  


✧

Ripper’s head makes contact with something solid but squashy as he sits upright and he grunts with pain, automatically recoiling from whatever he just made contact with and reaching down, panicked, expecting to need to grab Randall’s body and stop him from sliding away. But his fingers only find the sheets that are sticking to his sweat-sticky skin and he forces his eyes to open, blinking blearily. It takes a few moments, but Ethan’s face comes swimming into view.

“What the FECK was that for?” Ethan snaps, rubbing at his nose and forehead with a scowl. “Jesus, Rip, it’s just me.” 

“Randall,” Ripper says, automatically, his mouth desperate to make the shape of the word that he couldn’t get out in his dream. “Randall. Where’s -” 

“ ‘M right here,” Randall murmurs, groggily, shifting against the bed on the other side of Ripper and waving a hand lazily in the air to make his presence known without opening his eyes. 

The sound of his voice, disgruntled as it is at having been rudely awoken, is what finally anchors Ripper back to reality. He still has to reach out, though. Has to run his fingers through Randall’s dark hair and then down the nape of his neck. Checking for warm skin and a pulse. 

Ethan makes an obnoxious throat-clearing sound. “Hello? I’m the one you just bloody attacked.” 

“I was just sitting up,” Ripper’s tone is mildly defensive, but he reaches out from Ethan anyway and pulls him back to his other side, feeling his face in the dark. He’ll probably be a little bruised and swollen in the morning, but his nose doesn’t feel broken or bleeding. “S’not my fault you were looming over me.” 

“I was trying to wake you. You’d gone all fidgety.” 

“...I was just dreaming,” He grunts, evasively. “Do you need some ice?” 

“We haven’t got any.” Ethan slips away from him and falls back against the bed with a grunt and a yawn. “S’nearly dawn. If it’s still hurting me, later, I’ll stick my head in a snowbank or something.” 

It’s clear that he’s ready to fall back asleep. Randall already has, judging by the way that his breathing has evened out. But Ripper? When he closes his eyes, he sees the darkness of a warehouse that’s home to a tragedy, and the shudder that rips through him seems to freeze every cell in his body. He can’t even think of sleeping again, too keyed up. So, he stretches and starts to shift down the bed. 

“I’ll get you some and put it in the icebox,” Ripper says, hissing softly as his feet touch the cold floor. “I think I’m up for the morning, anyway.” 

“Suit yourself,” Ethan says, rolling over to steal the space where Ripper had been and cuddling against Randall’s still form. “I want to wake up to pancakes.” 

“It’s good to want things,” Ripper mutters, automatically, shuffling to the door. It creaks when he opens it and he adds oiling that hinge to his mental list of things to do before glancing back at Ethan and clearing his throat. “Eh...Ethan?” 

“Mm?” 

Ripper stands there uncertainly. His stomach is roiling with mixed emotions and abstract feelings that he can’t put into words no matter how badly he wants to. Even at his best and brightest as a scholar, he never had the ability to discuss feelings. 

“...Never mind. See you in a bit, yeah?” 

The second creak of the hinge drowns out Ethan’s answer and the click of the door finding its place in the frame is the permission that Ripper needs to fall back bonelessly against it, staring ahead at the opposing wall. Staring past the faded blue paint and seeing the infinite blackness of a warehouse that had nearly been a tomb. And for a moment, the urge to go and wake Randall up again and look into his eyes to make sure that he’s entirely himself nearly overwhelms him. 

He takes a breath and squeezes the door handle that’s still in his grasp. It’s bronze and ornate and the ridges dig into the palm of his hand. The pressure is somehow both uncomfortable and soothing at the same time, finally coaxing his better sense to come out and take over control of his mind. Sort his priorities out. 

Randall’s fine. 

Everything is fine. 

It was just a nightmare -- just a bad dream. 

He finally trudges forward, away from the door and down the hall, grimacing at the draft that always seems to be blowing through even though he’s all but nailed the windows shut. He takes a left into the large sitting room and stumbles over to the stone fireplace, grabbing some kindling from burlap pouch that hangs off of the mantel and some dry moss from the bowl on top, setting up a tent-like structure and fumbling with a match to get a fire going, hoping to raise the temperature in here a few degrees before the other two finally come stumbling out. 

It’s not a very high hope. This farmhouse is a marvel of little inconveniences. Squeaking hinges, creaking floorboards, drafty hallways, windows with rusty latches, and leaks in the attic that refuse to stay sealed up. Ripper could have every day of the rest of forever to try and fix it all and there’d always be something else wrong with the place. 

But it’s theirs. 

Funny how the warehouse felt more familiar and more like home in a nightmare than this place does in reality. Ireland isn’t a place where Ripper ever expected to end up. London was his home, even while he was desperately trying to get out from under his father’s thumb, he couldn’t bring himself to go further than Soho. Just scrambled into the seedy underbelly of a familiar space because even his attempts at rebellion were carefully planned.

But the shadows only offer cover for so long. The Watcher’s Council had connections all over the place and a reach that went further down than hell. It hadn’t taken long for his father to find him, to send his bloody GRAN of all people to try and tell him to come back and live up to expectations that were made of him before he could talk. And she’d found him wrapped up in a cult, getting high on magic and - 

It wasn’t safe anymore. Even his Gran knew that. Knew that his Da wouldn’t be as reasonable about him refusing to go back. That he’d go ballistic if he knew all the details of what Ripper had been up to. 

Disbanding the group hadn’t been hard, really. Saying goodbye to Philip, Dee, and Thomas… it’d been just fine to wave them off. But Ethan and Randall? He wasn’t just friends with them. He - they practically lived together, spent all of their spare time in Ethan’s shite apartment flipping through spellbooks or watching telly, or shagging without the influence of magic to push them into it. He couldn’t leave them behind. Not if there was a chance that his father would figure out that they’d been with him and try to use them as leverage against him. 

Thus… Ireland. 

And an old, drafty farmhouse that had been left to Ethan by his Uncle, who’d decided to fuck off to America and make a go for it in Boston and only needed someone to take this place off of his hands. Six months of isolation from the rest of the world, six months spent wondering if his father would somehow still find him, even here, in the rolling green hills of this land. Six months of no summoning, of no more magic than it took to set up a protection spell around the property. Six months of chores and learning how to live off of the land and take care of the animals that putter around in the barn. 

Six months of nightmares. 

Ripper absentmindedly clutches his arm, brushing his fingertips against the tattoo that he knows is there, stark against his skin. He hasn’t felt the white-hot summons of the demon once since they’d disbanded everything. He assumed that their connection to the demon was only as strong as the tethers that bound them to each other. And when they’d fallen away from each other, the ritual was broken. Over. For good. 

So why is he still being tormented by images of Randall, broken and puppeted by a demon? 

Why does he wake up so often in a cold sweat with the lingering scent of the warehouse in his nose and the certainty that they killed him? 

How many more times is he going to kiss Randall and taste guilt like ash on his tongue, feeling certain that he’d lost him even though he’s right there in his arms? 

It’s all questions and no answers. His heart is racing again and he forces himself to breathe, tasting the smoke in the air of the fire that’s finally started to catch on the kindling. He gently places a split log there, in the fireplace, and watches the flames to make sure that they take before finally grabbing the empty beer bottles off of the coffee table that they’d left there last night, getting properly soused before bed just for something to do. They couldn’t get a telly out here and the old, antique radio only picked up a tune if the knob was fiddled with in just the right way, so most nights were spent reading, talking to each other, playing cards, or drinking. 

Usually drinking. 

He carries the bottles to the kitchen and sets them by the sink to be rinsed out, pulling back the curtains over the window there, above the kitchen sink, and peering out. There’s a fresh cover of snow on the ground. Good. That means he can grab a handful of the clean, new stuff and keep a ball of it in the icebox so that Ethan could use it, later, to soothe the swelling that was no doubt going to be there. And then check on the animals, make sure they’re fed and maybe see if the cow is going to give up any milk today.

These are also things that Ripper never saw himself doing. Survival is survival is survival, but he spent his entire life thinking that he’d be battling monsters, not...farming. The thought of having to stake a vampire chicken makes him snort and he turns away from the sink with a mind to fetch his coat and boots and then nearly jumps out of his skin when he sees Randall standing there, rubbing at his eyes. 

“Jesus!” Ripper gasps, pressing his hand over his racing heart. “How did you miss every creaking board on your way in here? Do I need to put a collar with a little bell on you?” 

“Mmph,” Randall mumbles, lowering his hands from his face. His eyes are a little bleary but, thankfully, the normal brown that he knows them to be. Not so much as a speck of green. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you heard me come in.” 

“Guess I was lost in thought.” Ripper smiles ruefully. “What are you doing up?” 

“Ethan kept stealing the blanket. And I figured if I was going to be awake and cold, I might as well do it where I could get coffee.” 

He makes a beeline for the coffee pot as he speaks, finding their tub of coffee beans and setting it next to the grinder. He gives the container a little shake and frowns and Ripper knows that they’re getting low. Not just on that -- on sugar, tobacco, and other things too. It’ll mean having to take a trip into town, which Ripper avoids like the bloody plague. Somehow always afraid that they’ll run into someone they know there. Can hardly stand to go with but really can’t bear to stay behind and risk something happening to them. 

“I’m not sure how well that old car in the garage is going to do in the snow,” Ripper says. “Think you’ll manage another few weeks without coffee?” 

“I think I’d rather die.” 

The words are half-playful and half-resigned but they hit Ripper like a stone lobbed directly at his gut, a heaviness that threatens to drag him down. Randall with glowing green eyes… Randall falling forward into his lap, cold and ice and dead. 

“Don’t say that.” 

Ripper’s voice cracks like a whip and the words are out before he can really stop them. Randall looks over at him, surprise and confusion driving the sleep out of his expression, then guilt. 

“Sorry,” He says, the corners of his mouth turning downward. “I didn’t mean to sound… yeah, I’ll be fine without it. Honestly.” 

Ripper raises both of his hands up, somewhere between urging him to stop talking and gesturing in surrender. “No, no. I’m just...feeling off. Maybe being cooped up inside too much is getting to me. It’s alright, really.” 

Randall chews on his bottom lip, looking at him with concern, and Ripper feels sick all over again at the thought of losing him. 

“...Maybe we should do something, today.” Randall says, turning back to the grinder. He pours some coffee beans in and they sound like rain as they settle in. “Take a longer walk than just to the barn. Probably be good for all of us to step out of the house for a little while.” 

“Maybe,” Ripper says, even though that solution doesn’t answer the longing in the pit of his stomach. There’s a desperate urge inside of him, a call to action… but the what-for is still a mystery. “Speaking of the barn, I’m going to go make sure everyone’s fed. Mind putting the kettle on the stove for me?” 

Randall scrunches his nose up at the mention of tea, but nods in agreement and tilts his head toward Ripper’s direction as he turns the hand crank on the grinder, his brow furrowed with effort. Ripper takes that as a silent invitation to kiss him and he does, pressing his lips against his temple. Feeling his pulse again. 

He’s there.

He’s right there and he’s fine. 

“Don’t go anywhere,” Ripper says as he pulls back. He’s only half-kidding. “And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” 

“Sir yes sir.” 

Randall gives him a funny little salute and a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. There’s concern there and Ripper knows that Randall sees and hears how weird he’s being. And he wishes he could explain, but how is he supposed to look him in the eyes and tell him that he’s been dreaming of him dead every night for so long now? 

It’s not a subject for polite conversation. It’s not even a subject for impolite conversation. It’s just… something that shouldn’t be and he’s still left to feel disgruntled as he grabs his coat off of the hook and slips into his boots. 

Maybe Randall’s right. They just need a break in routine. A little bit of diversity might make his mind stop going so wild.


End file.
